{ feuilleton }

Among recent DVD releases there’s a handful worth noting here. First up is another great collection of rare cinema from the Center for Visual Music, 3 Films by Elias Romero.
Elias Romero is considered to be the Grandfather of the Light Show. In San Francisco in 1956 he began developing a performance medium using overhead projectors. [...]

It’s always a red letter day when a new issue of Arthur Magazine appears and this one is especially good, featuring a substantial history of the creation and influence of pulp villain Fantômas (for which I helped source some photos) and an interview with extraordinary singer and musician Diamanda Galás. Lots more besides and as [...]

Monsieur Wiley in yesterday’s comments reminded me of George Franju’s seldom seen Judex, a 1963 film based on the Feuillade serials of the same name. Louis Feuillade (1873–1925), as you really ought to know by now, was the director of the original Fantômas serials (1913–14) and also Les Vampires (1915–16), obvious forerunners of Diabolik with [...]

More pulp madness as Mario Bava’s 1968 crime caper finally appears on DVD in the UK this week, a camp confection from an already very camp decade, although it pales beside the lurid excesses of Barbarella which was released in the same year. Both films were based on popular European comic strips, and both are [...]

Orphée aux points by Jean Cocteau (1950).
An exhibition of Cocteau drawings from the collection of
Dominique Bert opens today at the Louvre des Antiquaires, Paris.
Jean Cocteau (1899–1963): Collection privée de Dominique Bert
23rd March–22nd April 2007
Le Louvre des Antiquaires
2, Place du Palais Royal
75001 PARIS
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Fantômas
• La Villa Santo Sospir by Jean Cocteau

…Fantômas was championed by the Parisian avant-garde, first by the young poets gathered around Guillaume Apollinaire, who, together with Max Jacob, founded a Société des Amis de Fantômas in 1913, and later by the surrealists. In July 1914, in the literary review Mercure de France, Apollinaire declared the imaginary richness of Fantômas unparalleled. The same [...]